Monday, April 17, 2006
adequate bird flu vaccine supply years away
CLEVELAND — Health scientists and engineers are racing to find new ways to produce a vaccine that will protect people from the threat of a worldwide bird-flu pandemic.
They’re working with plants, insects and bacteria that they hope can churn out huge quantities of vaccine more efficiently than the present, agonizingly slow system of using millions of chicken eggs.
An adequate supply of vaccine for the lethal H5N1 flu virus won’t be available for years, experts from seven countries, 44 universities and 60 biotechnology companies agreed at a conference this week in Cleveland sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences.
“We’re not ready,” said Bruce Gellin, the director of the National Vaccine Program Office at the Department of Health and Human Services. “If it happens tomorrow or next year, we’re in trouble. It’s a sobering picture.”
Klaus Stohr, the head of the World Health Organization Influenza Team, said that one dose of a safe, effective vaccine for H5N1 was “going to be much more valuable than diamonds.”
In the past three years, bird flu — also known as avian flu — has killed millions of birds, a small number of mammals and 109 humans in Asia, Europe and Africa. So far, it’s overwhelmingly a bird disease, but it’s mutating rapidly and might change into a form that could pass among humans.
The 2006 spring bird-migration season is just beginning, raising fears that the virus could reach the Western Hemisphere this year.
“It’s routine for a virus to cross hemispheres from Russia to Canada via the Arctic,” said Michael Callahan, the manager of avian influenza surveillance for the Department of State.